mundus

Mundus, mundi, m., second declension. There is also an adjective mundus, munda, mundum meaning "clean, neat, elegant", and the two are almost certainly one word: the noun is a loan-translation of Greek kosmos, which likewise means both "ordered arrangement" and "the universe". The world is the tidy thing.

Classically it is the whole physical order, sky included, and orbis terrarum is the alternative when a writer means the inhabited earth specifically. Christian Latin narrows and sours it into "the world" as opposed to the spirit, hence contemptus mundi and the monastic phrase fuga mundi. English mundane arrived through that sour sense and has never got out of it, while mundus in its clean sense gave French monde and Spanish mundo their whole family.